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The Secret Obstacles in Washington's Career* 



ADDRESS BY 



HON. GEORGE C. HOLT, 

AT 

DELMONICO'S, 
JANUARY M, 1903. 






UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, 

NEW YORK, 

JUDGE'S CHAMBERS. 



December 4th, 1907. 

Adrian H. Joline, Esq., 

54 Wall Street, H. Y. 
My dear Adrian: 

I duly received your new "boolc, for 
which I am very much obliged. I read it 
through the other evening with great 
pleasure. I had read the first two arti- 
cles "before, one in the Independent, and 
one somewhere else. The paper on Martin 
Van Buren is capital, and your address on 
the text that "charity suffereth all 
things and is kind" is very good. You 
state somewhere that everybody except 
Washington and Mark Twain tells lies at 
some time. Did I ever send you my paper 
on "The Secret Obstacles in Washington's 



^lil^ 



Career"? There is a case of a lie by 
Washington treated of in that paper, and 
if you have neyer seen it, I will send 
you a copy. 

Yours Faithfully, 




d^Q^. 




The Secret Obstacles in Washington's Career* 

By Hon. GEORGE C. HOLT. 

It seems rash to try to say anything new about Washington. 
Every transaction of his life has been minutely investigated, every de- 
tail has been described in many books, and, upon the whole, no man of 
the Eighteenth Century is more thoroughly, accurately and univer- 
sally known. Especially does it seem presumptuous to attempt to 
speak of Washington to the Sons of the Revolution, to all of whom the 
story is so familiar. But to us, at least, the story, although familiar, 
is never stale or dull ; and I am sure that any appreciative and sympa- 
thetic paper about Washington, even if it contains nothing new or 
striking, will always be welcomed in this Society, among all whose 
members his name and fame are held in constant honor. 

I shall say nothing new abont Washington; but while recently 
reading afresh the story of his life and of the Revolution, I have been 
deeply struck by the unusual extent of the secret and hidden difficul- 
ties which embarrassed and obstructed Washington at many stages of 
his career; difficulties which were not apparent to the public at the 
time, and, in some cases, are not apparent to a superficial observer 
now, but which Washington knew and appreciated and had to conceal 
in his own heart. This is a heavy burden that leaders in great crises 
frequently have to bear, but to which few men, in judging their con- 
duct, give adequate weight. Lincoln, for instance, although in certain 
personal characteristics the very opposite of Washington, met with 
certain kinds of difficulties, both in military operations and in civil 
administration, which were singularly similar to those which Wash- 
ington had to endure. For a long time after the Civil War began Lin- 
coln was forced to use subordinates whose treachery, dishonesty or in- 
capacity he knew or suspected ; and while his own mind was filled with 
the gloom of his own distrust of them, he was forced, in order to main- 

3 



The Secret Obstacles in Washington's Career. 

tain the public faith in the war, to exhibit at all times before the people 
the appearance of a buoyant and sanguine trust in their fidelity and 
confidence in their capacity. At the very time when the press and the 
most zealous supporters of the war were denouncing him for the results 
of the blundering incapacity or intentional hostility to the cause of 
some of the officers in command, he was frequently himself convinced, 
in his own heart, that they were incompetent or half-hearted in the 
cause of the Union, while compelled by the exigencies of his position 
to pretend to believe in their ability and fidelity; and this was the 
hardest of the burdens which he had to bear. 

Before entering upon a consideration of the particular difficulties 
which Washington had to encounter in the Revolution, it is desirable 
at the outset to observe how inherently distasteful to his character was 
the general nature of the work which he was called on to perform. 
Washington was forced by his convictions of duty to lead a democratic 
revolution against the English crown, but he was by birth, by associa- 
tions, and by innate traits of mind, a patrician and a royalist. He was 
sprung from a long line of English gentlemen who had always been 
conspicuous for their attachment to the monarchy. The founder 
of his family in England was a Norman knight who came to England 
with or in the time of the Conqueror. One of this knight's descendants 
fought for Henry III. against de Montfort in the War of the Barons; 
another joined in the invasion of Scotland under Edward I. In the 
Civil War against Charles I. many members of the family fought on 
the royal side. One was killed at the siege of Pontefract Castle; an- 
other served in Prince Rupert's horse; another was Governor of 
Worcester Castle, and defended it heroically against a long siege by 
Fairfax until he was ordered to surrender it by Charles. The brothers 
John and Andrew Washington, who were the first settlers of the family 
in Virginia, probably emigrated to this country from apprehension of 
the hostility of the Cromwellian government. They undoubtedly se- 
lected Virginia, instead of any of the Northern Colonies, as their place 
of settlement for the same reasons which led so many others of the 
English gentry to settle there. It was the colony which best preserved 

4 



The Secret Obstacles in Washington's Career. 

and reproduced the existing system of English country life, the ser- 
vice of the English Church, and the English variations and grada- 
tions of rank and station in the colonial society and government. 

In such a society Washington was born and reared. All the in- 
fluences of his early life tended to make him a royalist and a conserva- 
tive. The atmosphere of the colony of Virginia in the eighteenth cen- 
tury was as fervidly loyal to the English crown as that of any English 
colony of the present day. In most of the English colonies which now 
exist the loyalty to the mother country is very marked, and in some of 
them the enthusiasm for the English royal family and the zeal for the 
English Church sometimes seem to us Americans almost ludicrous ; but 
the enthusiasm with which a Bermuda family regards the photograph 
of the Queen on the mantelpiece, and the zeal with which the people 
of Halifax uphold the cause of the Church of England against all dis- 
senters, are dull and torpid in comparison with the fervor with which 
the Virginia colonists regarded the government and the institutions 
of England in the eighteenth century. The memories of the great Civil 
War, of the execution of the King, of the Protectorate of Cromwell, of 
the Eestoration, and of the great Whig revolution were fresh in the 
traditions of the Virginia families. The ancestors of almost all of 
them had fought in that great struggle on the Royalist side. Many of 
them had emigrated to Virginia to escape the vengeance of Cromwell 
or his followers, or the apprehended vengeance of William or his sup- 
porters. They had been taught by their ancestors the doctrine of the 
divine right of kings, and they believed it. They had perceived the 
evils which accompanied the revolutions and the civil commotions in 
England in the preceding century, and they believed that such evils 
were inseparable from all opposition to the monarchical idea. The 
colonial system which they had established in Virginia was essentially 
aristocratic. The agricultural labor of the country was slave labor. 
The agricultural business was carried on by great planters, owning 
immense farms. There was no small farmer or yeoman class. The life 
of the planters was large and liberal. Their homes were conducted 
with a lavish hospitality that recalled the feudal age. In this society 

6 



The Secret Obstacles in Washington's Career. 

Washington was reared. He was born to large wealth. He was by na- 
ture, like most Virginians of that age, fond of the things which most 
Englishmen are fond of — country life and country sports; farming on 
a large scale; the supervision of the tenantry, workmen, and slaves; 
and the maintenance generally of a sort of feudal overlordship in his 
neighborhood. All his neighbors and friends lived the same kind of a 
life, and the natural development of a young fellow, sprung from such 
an ancestry, and born and reared among such surroundings, would 
have been to produce, in an ordinary man, a country, fox-hunting 
squire like those who formed the majority of the Tory party in the 
House of Commons during the reign of George III., or, in the case of 
a man of high intelligence and capacity, a Tory leader, like North. 
The last development which any one could have naturally expected in 
Washington would be for him to become the head of a democratic re- 
bellion against any monarchy, and particularly against the English 
monarchy. To any one, therefore, who knows the working of the hu- 
man mind, it is almost inevitable that he must have gone through a 
serious mental struggle in deciding to throw off his allegiance to the 
English crown, and in accepting the leadership of the forces organized 
to overthrow its authority over the American colonies. Indeed, it is 
almost certain, although there is nothing that Washington ever did or 
said to indicate it, that all through the Revolution doubts would arise 
in his own mind whether he had acted rightly in accepting the awful 
responsibility of joining in and leading a rebellion. It is impossible 
that a man of Washington's characteristics should escape those doubts 
at times. There are men whose nature seems to have intended them for 
revolutions. They are rebels by nature. They instinctively revolt at 
all authority. They are fond of change and variety, and instinctively 
oppose established authority. I do not mean to be understood as neces- 
sarily censuring men of this class. Some of them are men of very noble 
traits, who have exercised a great and splendid influence in revolution- 
ary movements ; but Washington was not only a man of no such quali- 
ties, but the whole bent of his mind and the characteristics of his na- 
ture were directly opposite. To him disorder was abhorrent. The 

6 



The Secret Obstacles in Washington's Career. 

authority of existing government was sacred. The maintenance of law 
and of existing institutions seemed to his mind an obvious and funda- 
mental duty, and any idea of rebellion against constituted authority 
was naturally repulsive to him. Many of the men engaged in the Rev- 
olution had doubts and showed them, not only of the wisdom of resort- 
ing to the rebellion in the first place, but also of its ultimate success. 
All of that class among the leading officers of the army whose devotion 
to the Revolution was not based on the highest convictions of duty, 
and who were simply serving in the army in the practice of a personal 
profession — such men as Lee, Gates and Arnold — were constantly in 
doubt whether they were not risking professional failure, and were 
constantly considering whether they should go over to the other side. 
Their attitude of mind was that of doubt constantly bordering on trea- 
son ; but there is another kind of doubt from which the minds of men 
like Washington cannot wholly escape — the doubt which comes over 
great minds in those times of gloom and despondency which always 
occur in such a cause, whether so tremendous a responsibility as rebel- 
lion ought to have been undertaken at all. Moreover, the conscious- 
ness of Washington that such feelings were working in the minds of 
his coadjutors, and usually from base and selfish motives, constituted 
a constant burden on his mind. That was the meaning of the pa- 
thetic expression which he uttered after the discovery of Arnold's trea- 
son at West Point, when he exclaimed to one of his staff, "Whom can 
we trust now?" He knew the treachery of Lee, the machinations of 
Gates and Conway, and the disaffection and distrust of many others, 
and under such circumstances the exclamation upon the discovery of 
the treason of Arnold, "Whom can we trust now?" was not so much 
an exclamation of surprise at the treachery of Arnold, as of appre- 
hension lest others should follow his example. In considering, there- 
fore, the admirable equipoise and serenity of mind which constituted 
so notable an element of Washington's character, it should be always 
remembered that Washington, all through the Revolution, had to 
crush down and repress his own doubts, and to conceal his distrust 
of many of his chief lieutenants, and at the same time to maintain be- 

7 



The Secret Obstacles in Washington's Career. 

fore the world an appearance of serenity of confidence in his cause, and 
in all those under him who were supposed to be engaged in promoting 
its success. 

Another secret difficulty which Washington had to endure grew 
out of the striking varieties in the people of the different colonies and 
the diversities in the officers and troops which he had to command. 
He commanded an army made up of troops gathered from the different 
colonies in New England, the Middle States, and the South. The in- 
herent differences betvreen the peoples of the different colonies were 
much greater at that time than at present. The Puritans of New Eng- 
land, the Dutch in New York, the German and Quaker element in 
Pennsylvania, the Catholics of Maryland, the gentlemen of Virginia 
and the Carolinas, differed vastly from each other in their education 
and qualities of mind. They were a people unused to military disci- 
pline. They had the free and independent character of pioneers and 
frontiersmen, which in fact most of them were. Moreover, in the lat- 
ter part of the war, the American army was reinforced by a large body 
of French soldiers, and always there was a large number of volunteer 
European officers in the army. Some of these men, like Lafayette and 
Steuben, were valuable officers, but a large number of them were con- 
ceited young coxcombs, who had obtained letters of recommendation 
from some influential European friends, whom Washington was 
obliged to receive and make places for in order not to offend their 
sponsors, but whose presence in the army was an unmitigated nuisance. 
It is difficult to imagine an army or a body of subordinate officers 
made up of more heterogeneous and incongruous elements. But there 
never was any intimation among the officers, or the rank and file, that 
Washington showed any favoritism towards any classes of troops, or 
regiments, or officers, and in the entire social and official relations 
between him and his officers there never was a suggestion of any per- 
sonal preferences between them. Yet he must have felt them. He 
was by nature a patrician, with fastidious tastes and dislikes, and any 
coarseness of feeling or rusticity of manner was instinctively offensive 
to him to an unusual degree. 

8 



The Secret Obstacles in Washington's Career. 

Another secret cause of self-distrust in Washington was the fact 
that he never had any technical training as a soldier. He had, in fact, 
the most admirable practical training in the camp life which he lived 
in the woods when a young man, while surveying in the western coun- 
try, and subsequently in his long experience in Indian fighting, but he 
never had much technical training in military science in the European 
sense. It was an age in which the art of war was greatly studied as 
a technical science, and in which proficiency in military tactics v\^as 
considered of great importance. The German army, under the father 
of Frederick the Great, and under Frederick himself, was perhaps the 
most highly trained and overtrained army that ever existed in Europe, 
but under Frederick the Great it had won great victories and achieved 
great reputation. Substantially all Europe was engaged about the 
middle of the century in military operations. It was an age of for- 
mality and precision, and there never was a time in which a more 
universal belief existed in the efficiency and importance of purely 
technical military knowledge in the conduct of war. All trained 
European officers could not avoid a sort of contempt for the American 
officers and troops. In Washington's first important military opera- 
tion, he and all the other American volunteers who accompanied Brad- 
dock's column in its westward march could not fail to apprehend the 
slight estimation in which their military knowledge or capacity was 
held by Braddock and his officers. They were good types of the heavy 
English swell of those days. They started into the woods loaded down 
with the ordinary English officer's mass of baggage. They advanced 
into the ravines of the Alleghenies with no other precautions than if 
they were undertaking a march in Flanders, and they received the 
warnings of Washington and the other American frontiersmen with 
the same contempt with which they would have regarded the advice of 
a Flemish peasant. Probably Washington himself, during all the 
early part of the expedition, assumed that the judgment of these Eng- 
lish officers, who had had so much more experience and knowledge of 
the art of war, was presumably more correct than his own. Indeed, it 
is not unlikely, even after the rout and destruction of the column, 

9 



TJie Secret Obstacles in Washington's Career. 

which Braddock's fatuous refusal to heed his warnings had brought 
about, and after Washington had demonstrated his possession of the 
greatest military attributes by the skill and courage Avith which he 
collected the remnant of the scattered force, reorganized it and con- 
ducted its retreat to safety, that he did not himself recognize how in- 
herently inferior to his own military knowledge and capacity was that 
of the foreign officers who had despised them. It is an extremely com- 
mon error for men who have not had a professional training to exag- 
gerate the importance of it, or, rather, to exaggerate the necessary 
superiority of those who have it over those who do not have it. The 
circumstances under which Washington was placed in the Revolution, 
particularly in the early part of it, were peculiarly calculated to de- 
velop this feeling in him. Charles Lee, very early in the war, was made 
second in command. He was a soldier of fortune, who had seen a great 
deal of military service in Europe. He was well versed in all the orna- 
mental part of European drill and tactics. He was a conceited brag- 
gart, who never failed to express his contempt for everybody who had 
not a technical military training, and even for most of those who had. 
To all the officers in the army who had anything to do with Lee, he 
was constantly harping on the fact that the American officers had no 
technical training in what he called the art of war. All the foreign 
officers, good and bad, who joined the American army were men who 
gave the same peculiarly exaggerated importance to the technical 
knowledge of the European methods of carrying on war. Steuben, 
who was a man of inestimable value in introducing discipline and sys- 
tem into the American army, was inherently a German drillmaster, of 
the martinet type. He would have heard with entire approval, and 
without the slightest sense of absurdity, the descriptions of the flog- 
gings and system of discipline in the German army contained in Vol- 
taire's "Candide" and in Thackeray's "Barry Lyndon" ; and the great 
crowd of French and Continental officers who swarmed over here in 
the Revolution, because they had lost all their money in play at Ver- 
sailles, or had failed to bring influence enough to bear upon Mme. du 
Barry or M. Maurepas to obtain a pension, all had the same inherent 

10 



The Secret Obstacles in Washington's Career. 

disbelief in the ability of any man to carry on military operations who 
had not been trained in the Continental school. These foreign officers, 
with all their faults, had many virtues. They were bright, gay, witty 
and brave young fellows, with charming manners, and, although most 
of them were a hindrance rather than a help to the cause, their opin- 
ions had that subtle weight and influence which those of men in a more 
polished social set always have upon men whose youth has been passed, 
and whose manners have been acquired, in a less artificial society. 
Washington, therefore, probably felt all through the war, at least un- 
til near the end of it, an inherent distrust in his own fitness to com- 
mand, a feeling that is very common among conscientious generals and 
leaders of hazardous enterprises of all kinds. This feeling it is essen- 
tial to conceal, but it adds vastly to the weight of responsibility upon 
the man who feels it. 

But the worst secret trouble that Washington had to carry hidden 
in his heart all through the war was the lack of cordial support by 
some of his officers and by Congress, either in the form of cold and 
selfish indifference to the cause, or, in some cases, of an actual and in- 
tentional treachery to it. Charles Lee, the second in command, we now 
know to have been a deliberate traitor, as genuine a traitor as Arnold, 
and in some respects a worse one, for Lee, unlike Arnold, never did 
anything for which he merited anything from the country, and never 
had any cause of complaint against the country. Washington did not 
know, however, and no one in this country, until the discovery of his 
correspondence in recent years, knew that Lee was a traitor. But 
Washington did know well that he was a volatile, feather-headed, con- 
ceited soldier of fortune, with no real capacity, while many people in 
the country regarded him as a great military genius. Then there was 
Gates, a small, thin type of the political general, of which this country 
saw so many in the War of the Rebellion. He was always scheming to 
get the military reputation which others deserved. Arnold won the 
battle of Saratoga, but Gates was popularly called the hero of Sara- 
toga. Gates was always intriguing with Congress to advance his rank. 
He had a particular hostility to Washington, as men of his kind usu- 

11 



The Secret Obstacles in Washington's Career. 

ally have to men of the type of Washington. Arnold, of course, was a 
traitor, but was a man of far nobler type than either Lee or Gates, and 
his treason probably never would have occurred if Congress had treat- 
ed him with any justice, or even with common decency. Indeed, the 
Continental Congress was a constant hindrance to the efflcient con- 
duct of the war. Some of its members were corrupt, a great many of 
its members feeble, conceited, and vacillating, incapable of appreciat- 
ing a man like Washington, or a brilliant soldier like Arnold, but en- 
tirely capable of admiring braggarts and flatterers like Gates and Lee. 
They paid little attention to Washington's advice; they left unheeded 
his most urgent letters; they left the troops unpaid; they interfered 
with the commissary department; they established, at Gates' and Con- 
way's suggestion, at one time, a Board of War, which was a bald 
scheme to take the military supremacy away from Washington and 
give it to Gates ; they ignored Washington's recommendations for pro- 
motion, and promoted political generals instead. It was with such 
supporters that Washington carried on the struggle. Who can de- 
scribe the enormous addition to the load of care and anxiety resting 
upon the shoulders of a man in the situation of Washington, which 
arose from the ever present sense of the hostility or indifference of 
those who naturally should have been his leading supporters. It was 
not until towards the end of the war that Washington was freed from 
the clogs of all this treachery and incapacity. He then became free for 
the simple reason that Congress by a natural process lost all public 
respect and sunk to a position of no power or influence, and he alone 
remained the spirit of the war. But until that time he was obliged to 
carry concealed in his own soul the sense of treachery and inefficiency 
in all around him. This secret knowledge of the treachery and indif- 
ference of his supporters followed him in almost all his actual military 
operations. The fall of Fort Washington was directly due to the med- 
dlesome interference of Congress against Washington's orders. The 
suffering at Valley Forge was perfectly needless. It was just as clear 
a case of an inefficient commissary system and a feeble war department 
as the shoddy uniforms under Cameron or th^ embalmed beef under 

13 



The Secret Obstacles in Washington's Career. 

Alger. The lack of hearty and effective support hampered Washington 
all through the war. It would be too long a story to refer to all the de- 
tails. Perhaps the Trenton campaign affords as characteristic an illus- 
tration of it as any other. 

The fall of Fort Washington, which was probably needless and 
which was ordered by the pusillanimity of Congress, involved, of 
course, the retreat of the American army on the Jersey side of the 
river, and Washington fell back towards Trenton, pursued by the 
English forces, largely Hessians, under command of Cornwallis. 
Washington's troops had been enlisted for short terms, which were on 
the point of expiring. They were dispirited and discouraged; deser- 
tions were taking place day by day. Lee, with a considerable force, 
who had been originally stationed high up on the Hudson river, had 
been ordered by Washington to make a junction with him, and Lee, 
after repeated dawdling and delays, had started and was crawling 
along in the direction of Washington, but at the time of the Battle of 
Trenton had only reached Morristown. It was now perfectly apparent 
that he was treacherously resolved on disobeying Washington's orders 
and not forming a junction with him. About the time that Washing- 
ton's little army had crossed the Delaware and was moving towards 
Philadelphia, pursued by the British forces. Congress, which was sit- 
ting there, broke up in a panic and moved to Baltimore. Washington 
formed his plan two or three days before Christmas to cross the river 
and attack at Trenton. As soon as Gates, who was second in command 
in Washington's own army, heard of his intention, he applied for leave 
to visit Congress on urgent personal business, the personal business 
being, in fact, to promote his own intrigues to supplant Washington 
and have himself put in command. Washington acceded to his request 
in imperturbable silence, and Gates departed for Baltimore in the 
track of the fleeing Congress. Washington divided his army into three 
divisions, one commanded by Ewing, one by Cadwallader, and one by 
himself, and planned to have each division cross the river in different 
places, a mile or two apart, and join after crossing. The weather had 
been very cold, and the river was filled with floating ice, and an ex- 

13 



The Secret Obstacles in Washington's Career. 

tremely severe storm came on with sleet and snow. Washington with 
the greatest difficulty got his division across. When he landed on the 
other side, about midnight, he received word from Cadwallader that 
he had made the utmost effort to attempt to cross, but had not been able 
to do so, and received word from Ewing that he had concluded that 
the night was so bad that no one would attempt to cross, and therefore 
he had not even made the attempt. 

What an hour! How bitter must have been Washington's sense 
of the treachery and incapacity of his supporters as he received these 
messages, surrounded by the shivering fragment of his army, by the 
bleak river, under the black night, pelted by the pitiless storm. Con- 
gress had abandoned the capital ; Gates had followed them to intrigue 
for his removal; Lee lay dawdling in the North, hanging back and 
hoiking for his chief's destruction; Cadwallader and Ewing had both 
found it to be impossible to do what he had just accomplished, and all 
this at the crisis of the country's fate. The term of the army's enlist- 
ment was about expiring. In a few days all that was left of his army 
would melt away. The hour had struck. It was the last chance. The 
cause was lost, if it was not saved that night ! How many men, in that 
situation, would have given up the struggle, which seemed abandoned 
by gods and men! How many men, even if they had not given it up, 
would have burst out in raving execrations against the traitors who 
had betrayed him, and the incapables who had failed him. Washing- 
ton made no complaint, exhibited no irritation, showed no hesitation. 
His purpose was fixed. No mischance of fortune could swerve that 
inflexible and irrefragable will. 

" The sun set ; but set not his hope ; 
Stars rose ; his faith was earlier up ; 
Fixed on the enormous galaxy, 
Deeper and older seemed his eye ; 
And matched his sufferance sublime — 
The taciturnity of time." 

My father, when I was a boy, often told me, with a breaking 
voice, the story of that night, as his father told it to him in his youth. 
My grandfather marched in the division which Washington led: After 

14 



The Secret Obstacles in Washington's Career-. 

the march had begun, Washington, who had personally supervised the 
start, and had ridden several times from one end of the line to the 
other to see that nothing was overlooked, took a place in the line in 
front of my grandfather's company, where he rode a long time just be- 
fore him. He was mounted on a powerful stallion, which he curbed 
and guided with one hand; and my grandfather never forgot and in 
telling the story always spoke of the impression of masterful power 
and tremendous will which Washington's bearing gave as he rode on 
that horse, surrounded by his staff, all in grim silence, while the men 
plodded on on foot with heads bowed to the driving sleet, and their 
flintlocks covered with their cloaks to keep their powder dry. You all 
know the immortal story of that attack — how, in the dim Christmas 
morning, they burst on the British force at Trenton, still torpid from 
the Christmas eve debauch; how they bagged the whole regiment and 
swept them back across the river; how Washington returned and en- 
trenched ; how Cornwallis, who had recalled his portmanteau from the 
ship on which he had taken passage for England to receive the thanks 
of the King and Parliament for ending the Eebellion, came on with 
hot haste from New York to Trenton to take command; how he told 
his officers, one night, as they went to bed, that they would unearth the 
old fox in the morning ; how the old fox that night, leaving his camp- 
fires burning, stealthily moved his entire force round the British rear 
without discovery, swooped down on the royal troops at Princeton, 
and again captured the entire force there; and how Cornwallis, his 
base of supplies being cut, had to evacuate New Jersey, fall back to 
New York, and leave New Jersey and the South to breathe again. 
There never was a more decisive moment in history. The little spark, 
which was almost stamped out, was ablaze again ; and, as Latimer said 
to Ridley at a crisis almost as great in the long struggle for English 
freedom, the candle that day lighted never was again to be put out. 
The usual commonplace critics thought the victory at Trenton 
and Princeton an instance of the fortune of war. Lord George Ger- 
maine said, "It was that unhappy affair at Trenton that blasted all 
our hopes." But to those who could detect real military genius it was 

15 



The Secret Obstacles in Washington's Career. 

no "unhappy affair," no piece of luck. The great Frederick, than 
whom no man of that or of any age could better judge of military 
merit, and who well knew that such merit may as well be shown with 
a little force as with great armies, pronounced Washington's Trenton 
campaign one of the finest military operations of the century; and 
Cornwallis, no mean judge, after the fall of Yorktown, when some 
one in his presence praised the military ability of Washington in that 
campaign, said that it was no greater and really not so great as he had 
shown at Trenton. It was the knowledge that these great commanders 
had of the diflQculties with which Washington was beset at Trenton 
which made them rank his work there so highly ; but now, in the light 
of history, we can see that the difiSculties which were obvious to 
Frederick and Cornwallis, and to all the rest of the world at that time, 
were, in fact, trivial and insignificant in comparison with those hidden 
obstacles which weighed on the will and depressed the soul of Wash- 
ington, but over which, hidden in the depths of his own breast, his iron 
will took its resistless way. 

Many other of the situations in which Washington found himself 
in the progress of the war might be referred to, in which the same dif- 
ficulties presented themselves, arising from the treachery or ineffic- 
iency or stupidity of those upon whom he had a right to rely for sup- 
port, but whom the welfare of the cause protected from criticism. A 
reference to specific instances in detail would occupy too much time. 
I will only refer to one other general class of difficulties under which 
Washington labored throughout the war. It was throughout largely 
a defensive war. Washington was obliged almost always to adopt a 
Fabian policy, eluding large engagements, avoiding decisive battles, 
and pursuing a general policy of harassing the enemy and protracting 
the war and avoiding decisive operations. It has been often remarked 
that he never won a battle ; that is, that he never completely triumphed 
in an actual active engagement conducted with a force large enough to 
constitute a battle in the usual meaning of the word ; but the truth is 
that he was always, until very near the end, fighting at an enormous 
disadvantage, with untrained and ill-disciplined troops, unfurnished 

16 



The Secret Obstacles in Washington'' s Career. 

with adequate supplies, and with forces less in number than those 
drilled regular soldiers who were usually opposed to him. As in most 
of the cases of rebellion by a poor colony resisting the operations of a 
country far from its base of supplies, it was Washington's obvious 
policy to avoid decisive engagements, to harass and wear out his oppo- 
nent, and to wait for especially favorable opportunities before hazard- 
ing the risk of any decisive engagement. Washington was not by na- 
ture a slow general. When the opportunity came he seized it, and 
struck as quickly and sharply as most of the great generals in history, 
but the solid judgment and the prudence which were characteristics 
of his mind made him realize at the outset the danger of rash action 
and the importance to the colonies of protracting the struggle as a 
means of wearing out the patience of the English people and bringing 
about a change in the administration which should substitute Chatham 
and Burke and Fox and the other friends of the colonies in the place 
of the administration of Lord North. 

Washington, therefore, from the outset adopted in a general 
sense the policy of avoiding decisive engagements. The result was that 
all his enemies and many of the genuine friends of the cause were dis- 
satisfied. It is always easy to criticise the over-prudent general, and 
frequently the criticism is entirely just. There are many men who, 
placed in command of an army, take all the time so exaggerated a 
view of the difiiculties opposing them that they never willingly act 
at all until practically assured of the certainty of their success. Such 
men often are not cowards, but they are almost as ineflQcient, and 
when they are found in command of military operations they cannot 
be removed too quickly. The diflSculty is to discriminate between that 
kind of a man and one who has simply the proper amount of caution 
and prudence to avoid rashness in action. It was difficult to distin- 
guish, for instance, at the outset, between such generals in the Civil 
War as McClellan and Thomas, and after the country had had such an 
experience of General McClellan's method of conducting operations 
that it had come to adequately comprehend his shortcomings, a great 
many men rashly inferred that the deliberateness and delays of Thom- 

17 



The Secret Obstacles in Washington's Career. 

as indicated the same traits and characteristics. Until almost the 
very end of the Revolution Washington was never free from criticisms 
for his dilatoriness and procrastination. That was the cry of all those 
little soldiers who were envious of him and ambitious to usurp his 
place, and of all their supporters, but there were also many excellent 
but shortsighted people who genuinely believed that he was censurable 
in those respects. John Adams, at a famous public dinner in Philadel- 
phia one evening, brought about great cheering by rising and propos- 
ing as his toast "a short and violent war." On the same day that Lee 
was captured by the English he wrote to Gates a letter from which 
the following is an extract : 

"Entre nous, a certain great man has been most damnably de- 
ficient. He has thrown me into a situation where I have my choice of 
difficulties; if I stay in this province, I risk myself and army, and if 
I do not stay, the army is lost forever. Our councils have been weak 
to the last degree. As to yourself, if you think you can be in time to 
aid the general, I would have you by all means go; you will at least 
save your army." 

This was the tone with which Washington was discussed by all the 
men of that class in the army and in the country, and this dissatisfac- 
tion had grown until it led, in 1777, to the organization by Congress 
of a Board of War, of which Gates was made president, with permission 
to serve in the field should occasion require it. This put him practical- 
ly in command over W^ashington. Mifflin, another inefficient general, 
was made a member of this board. Conway, a nobody, was made in- 
spector general of the army, with the rank of major general, and all 
this was done against the advice of Washington and was understood 
generally as a proceeding to force him to resign. The scheme, of 
course, failed, and as the war went on, he, more and more, became the 
soul and spirit of the Revolution. His detractors sunk in public esti- 
mation, Congress shrunk into its natural obscurity, and in the last 
years of the contest the whole power and authority of the country 
seemed to have gravitated by an irresistible attraction into the hands 
of Washington and to be represented by him alone. But until that 

18 



The Secret Obstacles in Washington'' s Career. 

time, during all the earlier part of the struggle, and to some extent 
during the entire struggle, he was hampered and impeded at every turn 
by a large body of either open enemies or foolish friends, neither of 
whom he could oppose, and toward both of whom he was obliged to 
maintain apparent relations of courtesy and good feeling. 

But it was not alone in military operations that Washington met 
with secret obstacles greater than those that were obvious. When he 
was called back from his retirement, after the organization of the 
government under the constitution, during the entire period of his 
eight years' service as the first President, he met with the same ran- 
corous and treacherous opposition from open enemies and from pre- 
tended friends. It was at a time, like most periods after a civil war, 
of bitter animosities and virulent hatreds. There probably has been no 
time in the history of this country in which scurrilous libels against 
everybody connected with public life, Washington included, were more 
numerous, more reckless or more malignant. The breadth of the dif- 
ference between the extreme democracy of the supporters of the Amer- 
ican Revolution and the views of those who remained loyal to the En- 
glish crown, and the vehemence and fury which the French Revolution 
had given to the controversies which raged over the same fundamental 
political questions made the time one in which it is difficult for us to 
imagine the intensity and ferocity of party spirit. This party spirit 
exhibited itself in every section of American society. Its existence in 
Washington's own cabinet was a fruitful source of irritation. Jefferson 
was an enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolution and upheld 
M. Genet and the party which supported him in this country, whereas 
Hamilton and Knox, the other members of the cabinet, while sympa- 
thizing with the good features of the French Revolution, joined with 
Washington in deprecating its excesses. Jefferson was always charg- 
ing Hamilton, and inferentially Washington, with hostility to the gov- 
ernment as established and with trying to set up a monarchy. In one 
of the discussions in the cabinet about the Genet affair, Knox, a fine, 
bluff, hearty, old soldier, without any tact, produced and passed around 
as an amusing caricature, a scandalous libel recently published called 

19 



The Secret Obstacles in Washington's Career. 

~^'Tlie Funeral of George Washington," representing the President 
placed on a guillotine, about to be executed, a horrible parody of the 
then recent execution of Louis XVI. Jefferson, in writing an account 
of this meeting, sa^^s that "the President at this burst forth into one of 
those transports of passion beyond his control, inveighed against the 
personal abuse which had been heaped upon him, and defied any man 
on earth to produce a single act of his since he had been in the govern- 
ment which had not been done on the purest motives. He said he had 
never repented but once having slipped the moment of resigning his 
office, and that was every moment since. In the agony of his heart, 
he declared, he would rather be in his grave than in his present situa- 
tion, that he would rather be on his farm, Mount Vernon, than to be 
made Emperor of the world, and yet, said he, indignantly, "they are 
charging me with wanting to be a King." Jefferson naively adds, 
"All were silent during this burst of feeling; a pause ensued ; it was dif- 
ficult to resume the question." Washington, however, who had recov- 
ered his equanimity, put an end to the difficulty; there was no neces- 
sity, he said, for deciding the matter at the present, and the regular 
business of the cabinet proceeded. 

The attitude of Washington in the Genet matter, and generally in 
relation to the war then waging between France and England, was it- 
self a striking illustration of the secret difficulties which he was 
obliged to surmount while President. He had been for seven years 
at the head of an army, conducting a great war against England. 
He had brought that war to a triumphant conclusion, but he had been 
enabled to do that by the simple fact that France had helped us with 
men and money, had finally formally declared war against England 
and had sent a French army and fleet to co-operate with the Continent- 
al army, with which assistance the capitulation at Yorktown was 
brought about. Under such circumstances it is impossible to exag- 
gerate the feelings of gratitude which Washington, as well as the en- 
tire American people, held toward France. Probably there was no 
man living for whom he felt a warmer personal friendship than the 
Marquis de Lafayette. Although he probably retained no especial 

20 



Tlie Secret Obstacles in Washington's Career. 

rancor toward England, yet it would not be in human nature for any 
man to have carried on such a war against England for seven years, and 
to have seen so clearly the way in which that war was conducted by the 
fatuous George III., and his still more infatuated advisers, without re- 
taining a considerable degree of prejudice and umbrage against that 
country. Moreover, at the time that M. Genet came to this country, 
the French Revolution had broken out. All the world recognized that 
it was the American Revolution and the doctrines which it had made 
prominent and popular in Europe which, more than any other single 
cause, had given rise to the French Revolution, and every American 
who disbelieved in a monarchical system hoped that the outcome of 
the French Revolution would be to establish free government in France, 
and, if possible, throughout Europe. Under these circumstances the 
French Revolution sent M. Genet to this country as its ambassador, 
and the substance of his mission was to induce us to ally ourselves 
with France and to fight England and the rest of Europe as their allies. 
The project appealed to the natural sympathies of the American people, 
and, with especial weight, to the national sense of gratitude and of ob- 
ligation to a country which had been of the greatest service to us in 
the time of our most extreme necessity. 

These considerations it is certain appealed to Washington person- 
ally with the same weight and strength with which they did to the 
country generally. But it was perfectly apparent that it would be 
suicidal for this country, still weak and almost ruined with its own 
war, to embroil herself in the European complications connected with 
the French Revolution. Washington, therefore, looking calmly at the 
entire question, decided to preserve an absolute and impartial neutral- 
ity. When M. Genet arrived in this country, he was received by the 
American people with unbounded enthusiasm, and was led to believe 
from the extreme popularity of his cause and of himself that he could 
virtually coerce the government into an alliance with the people of 
France. But Washington was inflexible, and finally, against violent 
public opposition, insisted upon M. Genet's recall. So, later, at the 
close of his administration, in his farewell address, when he was con- 

21 



The Secret Obstacles in Washington's Career. 

scientiously giving to his countrymen as a last legacy his deliberate 
judgment as to the wisest public conduct of this government, it was not 
an easy thing for him to advise his countrymen against any passionate 
attachment of one nation for another. This is his language : "Nothing 
is more essential than that permanent inveterate antipathies against 
particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be ex- 
cluded; and that in place of them just and amicable feelings towards 
all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another 
an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. 
It is a slave to its hatred or to its affection, either of which is sufficient 
to lead it astray from its duty and from its interests. Antipathy in 
one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult 
and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty 
and intractable when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. 
* * * So likewise a passionate attachment of one nation for an- 
other produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation 
facilitates the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where 
no common interest exists. * * * It leads also to concessions to 
the favorite nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly 
to injure the nation making the concessions, by unnecessarily parting 
with what ought to have been retained and by exciting jealousy, ill- 
will and a disposition to retaliate in the parties from whom equal priv- 
ileges are withheld." 

That was the deliberately accepted attitude of Washington in the 
great crisis of the French Revolution, by which he made himself appear 
to the short-sighted among his countrymen and his friends as having 
the same feelings toward France as toward England, and as being en- 
tirely unaffected by the ordinary sense of gratitude and personal 
friendship which influences other men. And yet, at the same time 
that this position of inflexible neutrality was taken in his public action 
and in his public papers, we find in his correspondence a letter written 
to Madame Lafayette, after hearing that her husband was in prison, 
in which he remitted to her the equivalent of 200 guineas. It is a 
-deeply interesting letter, not only as showing the warmth of Washing- 

22 



The Secret Obstacles in Washington's Career. 

ton's personal feelings, but as exhibiting the awkwardness with which a 
truthful man equivocates a little when it becomes essential to induce 
a friend in need to accept a gift. He writes, "If I had words that 
could convey to you an adequate idea of my feelings on the present sit- 
uation of the Marquis Lafayette, this letter would appear to you in a 
different garb. The sole object in writing to you now is to inform you 
that I deposited in the hands of Mr. Nicholas Van Staphoost of Am- 
sterdam 2,310 guelders Holland currency, equal to 200 guineas, sub- 
ject to your orders. This sum is, I am certain, the least I am indebted 
for services rendered by the Marquis de Lafayette, of which I never yet 
have received the account, I could add much, but it is best perhaps 
that I should say little on this subject. The uncertainty of your sit- 
uation, after all the inquiries I have made, has occasioned a delay in 
this address and remittance, and even now the measure adopted is 
more the effect of a desire to find where you are than from any knowl- 
edge I have obtained of your residence." 

It was with such feelings in his heart toward the country that had 
helped us in the Revolution, and toward the dear friend who had shared 
with him in the toils and glories of the war, and who was then in dead- 
ly peril of his life, that Washington put aside personal predilection 
and followed the path of public duty. 

The fact that Washington's career was beset with so many latent 
difficulties explains, to a great extent, that singular growth in admira- 
tion of which every one who studies his life is conscious. The character 
of Washington, as of all men and all things of the supremest excellence, 
seems, at first view, simple. But as you study it, the sense of its sur- 
passing greatness grows upon you. It is like his monument. A stran- 
ger first visiting the city of Washington notices when he alights from 
the train a plain stone shaft arising in a distant part of the town. On 
being told that that is the Washington Monument, he will probably ex- 
perience at first a feeling of disappointment. It is so unornamented, 
so plain, so common in design. But as he stays in the city the im- 
pressiveness of it grows upon him more and more. Wherever he goes 
it is in sight ; wherever he is, it rises silent before him. At the Capitol, 

23 



I 



The Secret Obstacles in Washington's Career. 

at Georgetown, at the West End, at Arlington, at Mount Vernon, from: 
everywhere in the city and from everywhere for miles around, he sees 
it, and as the time passes it grows and expands and uplifts, until at 
last its august and majestic presence dominates and dwarfs all else 
about the place. How fortunate that those who designed this memo- 
rial should have comprehended its requisites so well ! Any monument 
was, of course, in one sense superfluous: 

" Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, 
What needst thou such weak witness of thy name ? " 

But if any material memorial is to be, how well it is that it be so 
austere, so simple, so majestic, and that it should have such a myste- 
rious and subtle power to lift the hearts of those under the influence 
of its silent presence up to a comprehension of the greatness of the soul 
which it so fitly commemorates. 

24 



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